Coolermaster HAF 932 Review

There comes a time when a mid tower gets too cramp and crowded for your needs. This is what exactly happened to me. With a long GPU and a tall CPU cooler, a full tower casing will be more fitting. I researched quite a bit, and I did not want to spend too much on a full tower. Soon, I narrowed down to just one model - the coolermaster HAF 932.

I believe that first impression counts. It just says a lot about what the company which makes the products believe in, and the extra mile they go into. From the very first sight of the box, it looks fine. It has cut in handles for you to lug the box around. Upon opening up the box, I noticed that styrofoam packaging is of the cheap and breakable sort, and not much else - a notch below Thermaltake for instance.

Taking the case out out the box is without dramas. Examining the case closer, I noticed the build quality is moderate, and disappointed to see that there were some minor scratches inside the side panels. No big deal, but not impressed. Fitting of the side panels is again alright, but not great. Perhaps my expectations were too high. Again, Thermaltake beats it it this department.

Let's talk about the instruction manual. It is complete with some diagrams but little words to explain the process of installation. It includes a handy overlay sheet for you to mount the standoffs for your motherboard. i thought it was a neat idea. Accessories included like the screws, cable ties and 3.5" device front cover are all pretty standard stuff.

Let's take a look at the specs:

Available Color	Black
Dimension (W / H / D)	(W)230 x (H)545 x (D)575 mm (W)9.0 x (H)21.5 x (D)22.7 inch
Weight	13.2 kg 29.1 lbs
Material	SECC, Plastic
Motherboards	Micro-ATX / ATX / E-ATX
5.25" Drive Bay	6 (without the use of exposed 3.5 inch drive bay)
3.5" Drive Bay	5 Hidden 1 Exposed (converted from one 5.25 inch drive bay)
I/O Panel	USB 2.0 x 4, IEEE1394a x1, eSATA x 1, Mic x 1, Audio x 1
Cooling System	Front : 230x30mm red LED fan x 1 / 700 rpm / 19 dBA Side: 230x200x30mm standard fan x 1 / 700 rpm / 19dBA (support 120mm fan x 4) Top: 230x200x30mm standard fan x 1 / 700 rpm / 19dBA (support 120mm fan x 3 or 120mm x 1 + 230x30mm x 1) Rear: 140x25mm standard fan x 1, 1200 R.P.M, 17dBA (support 140mm fan)
Expansion Slots	7
Power Supply	Standard ATX PS2 / EPS 12V (optional)

Okay, installation of the PC components is easy enough. However, the 3.5" adapter is not user friendly enough. It requires you to adjust and fit so that it flushes with the front panel, which is a pain to do. Hard drive cage mechanism needs some work. You should be able to just slot the hard drive in. Hiding behind the removable front bezel for the 5.25" device bays is a breakaway vented metal piece. You got to be careful which bays you really want to use, or you may end up leaving a gap without the vented metal piece.

Despite the hiccups this case brings, I liked the case a lot. What I liked about this casing is that, it has a rugged industrial look with vented design, much in trend with what AC Ryan is offering with their MeshX Panels. It is a huge full tower with lots of room to work with. Tall CPU coolers, long PSUs, extended motherboards, long GPU cards, you will have no problem with space with this case.

I also like the fact that you can mount the PSU on the bottom or top if you choose to. If you mount it at the bottom, it rests on a vented base. Pretty neat. The cable management system is worth mentioning as well, with lots of useful cutouts for you to route and hide your wires and cables. You will have a very neat looking setup when you are done. I know, it does not have a removable motherboard tray, but it has a cutout behind the tray for you to access your CPU cooler mounts. Very useful. The fans are effective and quiet, which I like as well.

In conclusion, for the price, I would say this case offers good value for money. Yes, it is made in China and not Taiwan, but a similar alu-casing will cost considerably more. It offers good looks, good features and works well. I think that is all that matters.

Take a look at some pics below:

My Rig - Meshed Up

After installing a large 250mm LED side fan, the mountings on the acrylic panel just does not fit well. Time for a new look.

I went with the mesh design. I ultimately wanted some modder's mesh, perhaps the hex design from AC Ryan. But I did not want to shell out the money at the moment, in case I did not like it. So I went to the local hardware store and bought some small diameter mesh for a test run.

After cutting to size using a wire cutter, i attached the mesh to the side panel and held it down with 1/4 inch screws. It creates plenty of ventilation, and came out pretty well.

Warhammer Online - 1st Impression

Being a seasoned player of many online games spanning from Final Fantasy to COH/COV, Lord of the Rings Online, and of course World of Warcraft, I have great expectations of Warhammer online, which was launched yesterday.

First off, the intro cinematics was pretty well done. It is really an eye candy, with the opposing forces fighting, and one scene led to another very fluidly. It creates an excitement of what to expect in the game. So, the cinematics end, and you are led to the character creation screen. I would say customization is not at all innovative or class leading. You have a choice of gender, some choices of hair, face, beard, and not much else. I was hoping for more here.

When the game starts, you start off in a town. I will not go into the specifics, you can read a review if that is what you want. I will tell you more of my personal impression. The graphics are okay, but not great. It is not that realistic looking like you get in Lord of the Rings online. The character don't seem to have any expressions on their faces. All dead looking, and they do not blink. As far as presentation and graphics are concerned, this is a minus one for me.

Server load times and queue times are terrible as well. I might try it for one month and see whether I'll stay for this MMORPG or not. There is always World of Warcraft to go back to.

For the initial gameplay so far, Ihave only got to level 6 on my character, and it is rather slow grinding at the moment, and quests are not that all interesting. I will update when I get more in depth in the game later.

My Thermaltake PC Setup

• Thermaltake Armor+ MX Mid Tower Casing
• Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo @ 3.00 Ghz (Overclocked to 3.2 Ghz)
• Gigabyte EP35-DS3 Motherboard
• OCZ 4GB DDR2 Ram
• CoolerMaster 520W PSU
• OCZ Vendetta CPU Cooler
• Powercolor ATI 4870 GPU
• WD 640GB HDD
• WD 500GB HDD
• LG DVD Combo drive
• Sony Card Reader
• Blue LEDs
  

I am in the midst of doing some cable management in the casing. Being a mid-tower, it gets pretty tight in there, and it helps if all the cables are neatly organized. I will also be replacing a new side fan, which is more powerful and yet much quieter.

Some pics:

Thermaltake Armor+ MX Fan Woes

If you own a Thermaltake Armor+ Mx PC case, you will probably notice that the 230mm blue LED side fan looks great, effective, but also very loud. In case, you are wondering. okay, I will just get a fan controller to fix the speed. Hang on a minute, none of them will work.

The side fan is wired not to the traditional 3 pin fan connector, but a strange looking connector to molex configuration. Take a look below:



























No PC hardware stores that I know of sells anything like this, and if you need a replacement cable of this sort, not even Thermaltake can help you. They just don't sell this part. So what then can you do? There are only 3 options. One is to cut the wires up, and replace the connector with a 3 pin version. Two is to replace the entire fan. Three is to do the 7V fan mod to reduce the fan speed. I suggest doing the 7v fan mod, as it is the easiest solution available. A guide can be seen here.

LG Blu Ray Review

It is probably fair to say that the brand name of LG is more popular in Asia than any other parts of the globe. They had their hands busy in recent times, from production of LCD TVs to mobile phones, laptops and of course optical drives such as the new HD DVD - Blu-ray combo drive.

Although their customer service is sub par from personal experiences, let's take a look at this new GGW-H20L blu-ray drive. There is a good reason for this. It is currently the cheapest and fastest (4x) Blu-ray rewritable combo drive available retailing at SGD $488 compared to Sony's model at SGD $699. It is worth taking a look.

Let's take a look at some specs:

• Read Speed

• DVD-ROM (SL/DL): 16x/8x CAV
• DVD-RAM: 5x PCAV
• DVD+/-R: 12x/8x CAV
• DVD+/-RW: 10x CAV
• DVD-Video (SL/DL): 8x CAV
• CD-R/RW/ROM: 40x CAV
• BD-ROM (SL/DL): 6x/4.8x CAV
• BD-R (DL): 6x/4.8x CAV
• BD-RE (SL/DL): 2x/2x CLV
• BD MV: 4.8x CAV
• HD DVD-ROM (SL/DL): 3x/3x CAV
• HD DVD Video: 3x CAV

• Write Speed

• BD-R: 6x CAV
• BD-R (DL): 4x CLV
• BD-RE (SL/DL): 2x CLV
• BD-R (SL LTH): 2x CLV
• DVD-R: 16x PCAV
• DVD-R DL: 4x CLV
• DVD-RW: 6x CLV
• DVD-RAM: 5x PCAV
• DVD+R: 16x PCAV
• DVD+R DL: 4x CLV
• DVD+RW: 8x ZCLV
• CD-R: 40x PCAV
• CD-RW: 24x ZCLV

• Access Time:

• BD-ROM: 180ms
• HD DVD-ROM: 210ms
• DVD: 160ms
• DVD-RAM: 180ms
• CD: 150ms

Measuring at 146 x 41.3 x 185mm and weighing in at 870g, it is pretty much a standard sized optical drive. It uses a SATA interface with a 4MB buffer cache. This new drive is really a complete hybrid drive that even includes lightscribe technology for you to burn images on your home video discs for instance. It also comes with the usual manual, SATA cable and everything you need to get a simple installation going.

Blu-ray technology is still at its teething stage at the moment. Sure, there are more movies coming out in blu-ray formats, but drive speeds are still not astronomical at the moment, coupled by the expensive costs of blu-ray writable discs. If you want to watch your movies in your living room, you will also need a blu-ray capable player. In my opinion, unless you really have to have the technology now, it is best to adopt and wait and see attitude for the drives and media technology to become more mainstream, and for the costs to drop further.

Registry Fix

Registry Fix can Restore & Clean Up Windows Registry Files, Win32, Svchost.exe, Internet Explorer, EXE errors, Repair DLL Error Messages and Fix General Protection Fault Errors.

Does your PC crash, is your system running slow or are you receiving regular error messages, Iexplore, or System32 messages?

This program will scan your system registry and hard drive for invalid dll, svchost, file references, system references, javascript errors, activex errors, and outlook express errors for free. These invalid references cause system instability, PC errors, constant crashes, and general system slowdowns.

How does this affect me?

Every Microsoft Windows operating system has a registry. Your system registry holds a wealth of information about your computer, which is why we constantly hear from users that after using their PC for a short length of time, it no longer works the way it used to. This is due in part to invalid entries that exist in your system registry, that might exist because of software you are no longer using or software that was not properly removed. By removing these invalid entries, you can significantly increase the performance of your PC.

Why Registry Fix?

Many locations exist that are the cause of the most common PC troubles. We have pinpointed these locations, and our free scanner allows you to scan for invalid registry entries that might be causing your PC issues. The software will inform you of where the errors exist, and what potential errors they might cause. Registryfix will scan for errors related to ActiveX controls, DLL issues, Windows explorer errors, Windows installer issues, Internet Explorer errors, Iexpore and System32 errors, Runtime errors, Outlook and Outlook Express Errors, EXE errors, Svchost errors and a wide variety of other system issues.

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PSP Video Converter

If you are familiar with your PSP, you will also realize that the PSP will not read just any video format. So if you have a nice video clip or two that you want to load into your PSP and watch them on the go, you will need to convert them into PSP mp4 format that it can understand.

One of the best free converters is the PSP Video 9 software.

"PSP Video 9 is a free PSP video conversion and management application. It can convert regular PC video files (avi, mpeg, etc) into PSP video files, as well as manage/copy these PSP video files between your PC and PSP."

I use it personally, and I find it easy to use, and gets the job done.

Getting Wireless Connections to Work

Remember the days when internet connections were simple? So long as your PC is plugged into the modem with a live connection, it will work. Then came the freedom of wireless connections. Sure, when it works, it is a great thing. Unfortunately, we all have our fair share of connection woes that came along with it.

I use the Belkin N1 router for my home network cable connection. I must say, it is one of the nicest package visually that you can find in any router. It has a black theme going for it, must like what Samsung is doing for their LCD TVs. Setting up the router is simple enough, as most settings are automatic.

However, getting most out of your wireless connections can be tricky sometimes, as it is very much dependent on 2 variables. One is the environment, and the other is the signal strength and how good your router is. A typical home will definitely have walls, partitions and some electrical appliances. It will also depend how far your router is away from your portable PC for instance. All these play a part in the interference of the signal strength. One good thing to try is to place the router at the highest point possible. Maybe on top of a CPU, or mount it on a wall. Try to play around with the direction of the antennas to get a good signal. A good measure to to achieve 3 bars of signal strength. You can also try to play around with the settings in the router menu. Different routers have different settings for it.

Of course, not all routers are created equal. I would say the Belkin N1 is an average performer., but still better than a Linksys. The D-Link extreme models are the better ones to get, as the range coverage and signal strength is much stronger.

How to set up a SATA Hard Disk in Vista

So, maybe the primary hard disk which came with your PC isn't that big after all. Now you are at a point of installing a secondary SATA hard disk for your rig.

You slot in the spanking new hard disk in the drive cage, tighten the mounting screws, connected one end of the SATA cable to the hard disk, and the other to the motherboard, and even connected the power cable linking to your PSU. You did everything right to this point. Then you booted up your Windows Vista, it recognizes your hard drive, then what next? Okay, follow these steps.

Go to Start -> all programs -> accessories -> run.

Type in diskmgmt.msc and press enter. This will bring up the Disk Management tab for you. Here you should see all your hard drives listed. Scroll down, and your newly installed hard drive should not be initialized yet, so you have to get it done here. You can format it, name the volume, etc. After you have done this, you should be able to use your new hard disk.

My Experience with ATI HD 4870 Graphic Card

By now, you would have realize the hype and wave that the ATI HD 4870 graphic card has be stirring up. Over here, I will not go over the technical details. If you would like to read a review, go here.

Rather, I will share with you my personal ownership experience. I chose the Power Color version of the card. mainly because of its competitive pricing and one of the better known brands.



The retail box is not a very large one, unlike some other graphic cards which go over board with it. Upon unwrapping the contents, you will notice that the package includes the card itself, an installation disc, a D-sub adapter, a HDMI adapter, some screws and a puny little leaflet they call a quick guide.

They might as well leave out the quick guide, as it is useless and provide little information as to how to install the graphic card for someone who might not be very well versed in PC hardware and upgrading.

Make no mistake, this is one large graphic card. If you have a full tower casing, chances are that you will have no problems installing it. For me, I own a mid tower casing, and it is pretty much a challenge getting it to fit. There are 2 reasons for this. One is that it leaves minimal spacing between the card itself and the hard drive cage, and two, my PSU comes with rather thick cables. In fact, I have to remove my hard disk cage to get everything tightly fitted.

Once every was hooked up, powering up the PC, the card fired up in little fuss. There was just a short burst of the fan noise when starting up. Nothing more. I heard some people complained about the noise, but it really isn't that bad. Disc installation went well, installing the drivers, and some applications that came with it.

Now first the connections. I tested both the analog VGA connection and the HDMI connection. VGA is easy. Just plug in the VGA adapter, and connect your VGA cable to your monitor, and it displays okay, just like any other graphic card.

HDMI is a little tricky. I read that many people getting fussed about able to get picture but no sound through HDMI. One thing to note is that, you got to use the supplied DVI-HDMI adapter in order to get picture and sound over to your HDTV. If you just use any DVI-HDMI cable, it will not work. You will simply just get picture and not sound.

Now performance wise, I find it to be more than adequate to handle today's games. I tried Crysis on high settings and ran extremely smoothly. COD 4 ran well too. One thing I agree with the reviews is that, this card gets hot. With the card being stock and not overclocked, temperature was at 78 degrees idle, and 98 degress under load.

You maybe have heard of a "Fan Fix" in the forums, and I suggest you take a look if you would like to lower the temperature of the card. The link is here. It is a nifty and quick fix by varying the fan speed of the card manually. It worked out well for me. Setting at just 35% fan speed up from the standard 20%, I got the following:

Before fix
idle - 78 degrees
load - 98 degrees

After fix
idle - 51 degrees
load - 70 degrees

To sum it all up, it is not a cheap card. It is after all a high end card to begin with. I am very happy with the performance, but the documentation and bundled software needs work. I see myself owning this card for quite a long time before upgrading again.

Lian Li PC-P80R Review

Lian Li is known for its high quality and well constructed cases, and having 20 years of experience in the industry, it is no new player in the game. So when a friend told me he has just shelled out $600 on a Taiwanese made casing, the first thought that struck me was that, "he must have gone mad!" To be fair, after seeing the case, this is a little review I am doing.

The P80R is a special edition ATI CrossfireX version of the P80. On first sight, the case is a huge towering full tower casing painted in bright red and finished in brushed alu-armor. It has a special spider theme going for it. Looks wise, it is a real eye candy, especially if you are an ATI fan. Obviously, this case's appearance is targeted at the gamer.

Taking a closer look, it is easy to see that this is one well designed case. Just take a look at the edges, they are no sharp like conventional cases, but has a rounded cut to it. The attention to detail is there. These are little things, but they add up to the entire ownership experience.


On the top of the casing, you have your usual USB ports, Firewire and audio jacks, hidden in a lift top latch. Personally, I would prefer a sliding latch, but it works nonetheless.

On the front of the casing, you will see that the front panels are all vented. It is really both form and function. You see, there are 3 140mm LED intake fans mounted behind the front panel, and these vented panels allow good airflow to pass through to the inside of the casing. The front fans even has a filter which you can slide out for easy cleaning. Pretty neat.

The front panel is quite a unique design, housing 3 fans, and it can be made to be opened from the left or right by selecting the left or right hinges. I am thinking you will be keeping the front panel closed most of the time, in order for the fans to do their job, unless you need to access your optical drives for instance.

One excellent addition is that the front 3 fans and one at the top can be controlled via an integrated fan controller. Even though it is not a nice flashy electronic one, it is an excellent inclusion for a stock casing.

Looking inside the casing, you will see that they did not forget about the red theme and left the insides to be plain silver. No, it is also painted red. This will save you a lot of time and effort if case modding is your thing.
The motherboard tray is removable as you would expect of such a high end case, which makes maintenance and upgrades easier. There are 12 5.25" bays, 10 vented PCI slots, 6 3.5" internal drive bays, 4 intake fans, 1 exhaust fan, a lock for the side panel, a removable PSU bracket, a cable management side panel, provision for liquid cooling, and enough room to put the largest of high end motherboards and graphic cards in there. The top of the casing is even removable. In terms of it being a user friendly case, there isn't very much else you can ask for.
In conclusion, this is a gaming full tower themed case, and everything is well thought out and well constructed. Everything that you can think of in today's top end cases, it is included in this case. But for $600, it is an extremely expensive casing. If you can afford it, this one is hard to beat.

Quick Take on potterhouse.net

They call themselves Potter House. An online shop selling PC systems and components. Have a look and you will soon find their range of products is quite complete. But here lies the problem. They do not have a listed address or contact phone number, and never replied to any of my emails. Personally, i would not recommend you buy from them. A failure in terms of service in my opinion.

Component Price Guide

If you are located in Asia, you will be familiar with a website called Hardware Zone. I have included a link to the price guide which makes shopping for you easier. You will find the prices to expect on the various different components and where to buy them.

A handy little link to have when you go shopping!

Solution for Noisy Fans

Does your PC has a noisy fan? Sure, you can invest in a fan controller to reduce the rpms if you want to. But is there a simpler solution? You may have heard of it. It is called the 7v and 5v mod. If you have a Armor+ MX case like I do, none of the fan controllers will work, because of the strange pin setup of the fans.

I found a simple and effective guide which may be helpful to you. Here is the link. Save some money and do it yourself!

Webby Recommendations

Here lies my recommendations of PC related webbies. I only recommend websites which I have personal experience with. I will add on as I find more.

• Goo Goo Computers - A Singapore based internet company which sells customized PCs and related components. They do not have a store front, and deal online only. Fast email responses, very helpful and know their stuff. Pricing is competitive.

• Frozen CPU - An online shop which sells interesting components for modding your PC. If you are looking for lighting, accessories and coolers, this is a good site to shop. Mark, who is the owner of the site is helpful as well. They accept international credit cards, and ship worldwide. Highly recommended.

• Performance-PCs - Online shop with good selection of accessories and mod items. They ship internationally. Fast shipping as well.

• UF Technology - A local shop located at Sim Lim Square dealing with cables, connectors and adapters. They sell ready stocked items as well as customized items based on requirements. Quite a complete range and fair pricing.
  

Thermaltake Armor+ MX Case - A Personal Take

After about 4 years of owning a Dell and a HP mainstream PC for home use, I figured it is time for a change, and I wanted a custom PC. One of the most important items to consider when building a new PC has got to be the casing for me. It has to look good, has good features, and easy to work with. After numerous days of research, I finally settled for the Thermaltake Armor+ MX casing.
This casing is known as the Thermaltake Armor+ MX casing. It is a mid tower casing, a smaller version of its bigger brother the Armor+ which is a full tower version of the same design. On first sight of the case, it appears to be a rather large mid tower casing, maybe I am used to the smaller mid tower casings of mainstream PCs like Dell and HP. I figured, a larger mid tower is a good thing, which means more room to work with, and it might not get as hot inside the casing.

It is quite a heavy chassis, but it felt solid and of good construction. I like the way this casing is different from the norm. It looks futuristic, very stylish, and packed with features. I will summarize them as follows:

1. Cable management system - enable you to hide extra length of cables on the right side of the chassis, out of sight, and can make your case look neat.

2. 5 5.25” and 4 3.5” device provision - plenty of space to install your drives. However, bottom 3 drive space is blocked by front intake fan.

3. Sliding hood with toolbox on top -good for storing some extra screws, cable ties, a flash drive, and other small things. The tray can be removed to get extra access to inside of case. Very innovative feature.

4. Tool-free design - do away with screws.

5. Removable HDD cage- pull out HDD tray for easy access.

6. Excellent cooling system - Front (intake) : 120 x 120 x 25 mm blue LED fan, 1300rpm, 17dBA
Rear (exhaust) : 120 x 120 x 25 mm TurboFan, 1300rpm, 17dBA, Side (intake) : 230 x 230 x 20 mm blue LED fan, 800rpm, 15dBA.

My only gripe is that the side fan is a killer in terms of noise generated. Much louder than the 2 other fans. Most people will not get used to it. One solution is to mod the voltage from 12v to 7v for the side fan, and it will reduce the noise significantly.

7. Nice mesh design for front slots - good use of mesh design instead of cheap plastic covers.

8. Front protective flaps - made of aluminium, good protection and looks good.

In conclusion, I am very happy with this case. It is indeed a strong case, looks good and only flawed by a couple of minor issues. The side fan is a bit loud, plastic painted areas are prone to scratches and not fan controller friendly. Other that that, I feel it is a great case to own if you want something that is a little different from the norm.

Welcome Message

Welcome to PC Torque!

I created this blog to share with my friends and PC enthusiasts like yourself topics which are PC related. I trust that you will find the content interesting and useful.

Enjoy your stay!